Born
at 33
Hollis Street,
Boston, MA, USA on 19th January 1809, second of three children of poverty
stricken actors, David
Poe, and Elizabeth
Arnold Hopkins (Poe).
His parents were then filling an engagement in a Boston theatre, and the
appearances of both, together with their travels to various places during their
wandering careers, are to be plainly traced in the play bills of the time. Elizabeth
died on 8th December 1811 in Richmond, VA, USA and Edgar was taken into the
family of John Allan,
a member of the firm of Ellis and Allan, tobacco - merchants.

The
couple continued to play together during the period of the birth of their
children but with very minor success. They had two other children. William
Henry Leonard born in
Boston in 1807 and Rosalie
at Norfolk, Va., probably in December, 1810. Due to their poverty, which
was always extreme, the first child, Henry,
had been left in the care of his grandparents in Baltimore shortly after his
birth. In the summer of 1809 the Poes went to New York where David
Poe either died or deserted
his wife, probably the former. Elizabeth
was left with the infant Edgar
and some time afterward gave birth to a daughter. A suspicion was afterwards
thrown on the paternity of this last child and on the reputation of Elizabeth,
which played an unfortunate part in the lives of her children. It is safe to say
that it was unjust.

From 1810 on, Elizabeth
although in failing health, continued to appear in various roles in Norfolk,
Va., Charleston, S. C., and Richmond. In the winter of 1811 she was
overtaken by a fatal illness and died on December 8th in circumstances of
great misery and poverty at the house of a Scottish milliner in Richmond. She
was buried in the churchyard of St. John's Episcopal Church in that city two
days later.

Paternal
Ancestry

David
Poe of Baltimore, Maryland,
who had left the study of the law in Baltimore to take up a stage career, much
against the wishes of his family. The Poe Family had settled in America some two
or three generations prior to the birth of Edgar.
Their line can be traced back to Dring in the Parish of Kildallen, County
Cavan, Ireland, and thence into the Parish
of Fenwick in Ayrshire, Scotland.
The first Poes came to America about 1739. The immediate paternal
ancestors of the poet landed at Newcastle, Delaware, in 1748 or a little
earlier. These were John
Poe and his wife Jane
McBride (Poe) who settled
in eastern Pennsylvania. They
had ten children in their family, among them a DavidPoe
who was the grandfather of Edgar.
David Poe married Elizabeth
Cairnes, also of
Scotch-Irish ancestry, then living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from where,
sometime prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution they moved to
Baltimore, Maryland.

David
Poe and his wife, Elizabeth
Cairnes (Poe), took the patriot side
in the Revolution. David
was active in driving the Tories out of Baltimore and was appointed
"Assistant Deputy Quartermaster," which meant that he was a local
purchasing agent of military supplies for the Revolutionary Army. He is said to
have been of considerable aid to Lafayette during the Virginia and Southern
campaigns, and for this patriotic activity he received the courtesy title of
"General." His wife Elizabeth
took an active part in making clothes for the Continental Army. David
and Elizabeth Poe (Sr.) had seven
children David,
the eldest son, becoming the father of Edgar.
Two sisters of David, Eliza Poe
(afterward Mrs. Henry Herring)
and Maria Poe (later
Mrs. William Clemm)
enter into the story of Edgar's life, the latter particularly, as she became his
mother-in-law in addition to being his aunt. With her he lived from 1835 to
1849.

Maternal Ancestry

The
young widow whom David Poe
married in 1806 had been born in England in the spring of 1787.
She was the daughter of Henry
Arnold, and ElizabethSmith both
actors at the Covent Garden Theatre Royal, London. Henry Arnold died apparently
about 1773. His widow continued to support herself and her child by
acting and singing, and in 1796, taking her young daughter with her, she
came to America and landed in Boston. Mrs.
Arnold continued her
professional career in America at first with considerable minor success. Either
immediately before, or just after arriving in the United States, however, she
married a second time, one Charles
Tubbs, an Englishman of
minor parts and character. The couple continued to act, sing, and dance in
various cities throughout the eastern seaboard and the young Miss Arnold was
soon noticed on the play bills appearing in childish roles as a member of the
various troupes to which her family belonged. Mr.
and Mrs. Tubbs disappeared
from view about 1798 but the career of Elizabeth
Arnold, Poe's mother, can
be traced accurately by various show bills and notices in the newspapers of the
different cities in which she played until her death in 1811.
It was during her wanderings as an actress that she married C.
D. Hopkins, himself an
actor, in August, 1802. There were no children by this union. Hopkins
died three years later, and in 1806, as previously noted, his widow was
married to David Poe.

The Allan Family

Elizabeth
Poe was survived by her three
children. Two of these, Edgar
and Rosalie,
were with her at the time of her death and were cared for by charitable persons.
Edgar,
then about two years old, was taken into the home of John
Allan, a Scottish merchant in fairly
prosperous circumstances, while the infant Rosalie
was given shelter by a Mr. and Mrs.
William Mackenzie. The
Allans and Mackenzies
were close friends and neighbours. The children remained in these households,
and the circumstances of their fostering were, as time went on, equivalent to
adoption.

Frances Keeling Valentine (Allan)
also known as Fanny,
the wife of the Scottish merchant who had given shelter to the infant orphan Edgar
Poe, was a childless woman who had
been married for some years. Fanny
had herself been orphaned at the age of ten which probably was one of the
reasons for taking Edgar
to their home, and she was only 26, slightly older than Elizabeth.The
child Edgar
appears to have been a bright and attractive little boy, and despite some
reluctance on the part of Mr. Allan,
he was soon ensconced as a permanent member of the household. Although there is
some evidence of an attempt on the part of paternal relatives in Baltimore to
assert their interest in the child, the young boy remained as the foster-son of John
Allan in Richmond, where he was
early put to a school kept by a Scottish dame and apparently later to one William
Irwin, a local schoolmaster. There
is every evidence that his early years of childhood were spent in happy and
comfortable surroundings. Fanny
and her maiden sister, Ann Moore Valentine, who resided in the same
household, were peculiarly fond of their "pet." He seems, indeed, to
have been somewhat overdressed and spoiled as a very little boy, a propensity on
the part of the women which the foster-father tried to offset by occasional but
probably welltimed severity.

In 1815 the family with Fanny's sister Ann sailed for England on the Ship "Lothair,"
taking Edgar
with them, Arriving in Liverpool on 18th July 1815 they continued on to
Irvine where most of the Allan relatives lived. The Galts,
Allans, and Fowlds, at Kilmarnock, Irvine, and other
places about Ayrshire. A journey was made to Greenock,Glasgow
and Edinburgh, and then
to London in the late fall of 1815 (October) when Edgar
was sent back to attend school in Irvine.There
for a short time he attended the pre-reformation Kailyard Grammar School at
Kirkgatehead. This
school was closed in July 1816 when a new academy was built.

While
in Irvine Edgar stayed with John's spinster sister Mary in Bridgegate House, a
two-storey tenament house owned by the Allan
Family or William
Galt. William is possibly a
distant relative of John Galtthe writer
born in Irvine. The Allan/Galt house in Irvine was only a few doors from the
printing house and bookshop of publisher David
Macmillan. In the same square was Templeton's
Bookshop, where Robert Burns,
some 34 years earlier, had spent many hours browsing through stacks of old sheet
music and songs. Beside the river Irvine stands the parish church and alongside
it the graveyard, in which all the Allan ancestors are buried. John
Allan, who had himself been
orphaned, emigrated to America with his uncle, William
Galt, who became a weathy merchant
with considerable interests in the European and American trade of colonial
produce and tobacco. William Galt
eventually died as one of the richest men in Virginia.

Edgar is reported as having
found few pleasures here in his exile from the the two women whose adoration he
was already addicted. He shared a room with James
Galt, a cousin of the family, who
also attended the Grammar School. James
was born around 1800 so was a good deal older than Edgar, and it is
suggested that he had to keep an eye on Edgar who threatened to run away to
London or back to America. James
Galt went to America when the Allans
returned there.

By
1816, however, he was back in London where his foster-father was
endeavoring to build up a branch of his Richmond firm, Ellis and Allan, by
trading in tobacco and general merchandise. The family resided at Southampton
Row, Russell Square, while the young Edgar
was sent to a boarding school kept by the Misses
Dubourgs at 146 Sloane Street,
Chelsea. He remained there until the summer of 1817. In the fall of
that year he was entered at the Manor House School of the Rev. Mr. John
Bransby at Stoke Newington, then a suburb of London. At this place be
remained until some time in the spring of 1820 when he was withdrawn to
return to America.

The
young Poe's memories of his five years' stay in Scotland and England were
exceedingly vivid and continued to furnish him recollections for the remainder
of his life. He seems to have been a precocious and somewhat lordly young
gentleman. A curious and vivid reminiscence of these early school days in
England remains in his story of "William
Wilson." It is significant of
his relations with his foster-parents that the bills for his English schooling
are rendered for Master Allan.
There can be little doubt that at this time Mr.
Allan regarded him as a son.